I came across a tool this week. It is called “Network Stuff”

It is a tiny little app, but has a bunch of features that could be helpful when trying to diagnose network issues.

My favorite part is the status window. The TCP/UDP options give you a quick view of the ports owned by applications:

I like this one, since many times I can see my machine is listening on a port, but I have no idea which app is doing it.

It also has a wake on lan utility:

And an ARP tool you can use to grab the MAC address of a machine on your LAN:

There are a bunch of other networking tools packed into this one. The interface has a slight learning curve, but on the plus side it is a stand alone exe that does not require an install – makes it easy to put on a flash drive to take around while working on systems.

Get it from our website:

Network Stuff Download

Get it from the Network Stuff Website:

Network Stuff

Today we released Beta 4 of Enterprise Remote Control Online.

We have made some significant upgrades that will save you time, and we have a huge price discount for those that purchase during the beta period.

What is it?

It allows you to take control of computers remotely.

No need to open up firewalls, or know the users public ip address. The system automatically figures out the best way to connect to that remote user.

Lets see how it can help you support users on your local network and beyond.

Support Requests

Have you ever gotten a support call for a computer that is outside your network, and outside your control? Support requests are a great way to help those users.

When you first login to Enterprise remote control, you are shown an empty list of support requests:

When that user calls, you simply click on the “Start New Support Session” button.

A new session is created, and you can use this to control their computer.

How?

You can tell them to visit www.help27.com and type in that invitation code:

They will download and run a small helper file, and in a few moments that support request will light up on your side:

Notice how it will fill up with additional information such as the local user account name, operating system version, and the local IP address.

The support request also has a convenient “Email User” option that will launch your default email client with a simple message that includes a direct download to the agent. This can be a real time saver when you have a user that has trouble getting things right over the phone.

To control their computer, you simply press the connect button:

A few seconds later you are controlling their PC as if you were in front of it:

Once you disconnect the software will automatically uninstall itself from the user’s computer, and the support request will be deleted.

Permanent Computers

What about those computers you want to access all the time?

Without a user typing in a 9 digit code?

The computers section is the answer to that:

To register a computer, you simply click the “Add Computer” button and you can generate an agent install package. Install this software on all of the computers you want to control.

Each computer displays the local ip address, currently logged in user, a name and a description.

The default name and description are pulled from the computer settings. You can easily edit them after they have been added:

Searching for computers is a breeze. The search box is instant. The moment you start typing, it will automatically narrow the list of computers down to only those that match. No page refresh needed.

This can be a huge time saver if you have a user on the phone, and only know their windows logon name – but have no idea what computer they are logged into.

User Accounts

What if you want to add additional users? What about restricting their access?

It is simple to do with the new user settings page. You can add a user, and decide what parts of the site they have access to:

That way you could setup a user that can only perform support requests, and they could not access any other part of the account.

You can restrict their computer access as well. Forcing them to ask permission, or only have “view only” rights is simple:

Groups

Sometimes global permissions are not enough. Groups can help you narrow down access those users have.

Here is a perfect example:

You have all of your computers added to the system. The accountant upstairs needs access to only 3 of them, and on top of that you only want her to connect after asking permission from the remote user.

How would you do it?

Setup a new group:

And then select the user(s) you want to limit:

Pick the computers you want them to access:

And finally, set the permissions:

Now when that user logs in, they can only see those computers – and when they try to connect they are forced to ask permission from the remote user before they can connect.

Remote Desktop Support

We are constantly improving our support for remote desktop, and have plans on expanding it even further in the future. Right now you can access some of it. When you connect to a computer, you can actually jump into any remote desktop session that is in progress.

Simply pick the username from the drop down at the top of the viewer window and you will jump into their session:

In a future beta you will be able to search for RDP users across all of your machines and jump directly into their sessions.

This feature is a big plus if you have 2012 servers on your network – Microsoft has removed all shadowing support, and this is a great replacement for it.

Pricing & Licensing

With all of these features packed in it has to be expensive right? During the beta we are offering a special rate that is guaranteed for two years:

1 Administrator & 10 Computers – $39.95 a month (Or $399 a year)

5 Administrators & 50 Computers – $59.95 a month (Or $599 a year)

10 Administrators & 100 Computers – $99.95 a month (Or $999 a year)

The number of administrators is more generous than you think. Some companies charge per connection, or per user account. With Enterprise remote control you can actually add as many user accounts as you want.

We only limit the number of concurrent administrators. That means if you have 15 admins, but only 5 of them are using the system at a time…then you only need 5 licenses.

It does not limit the number of viewer connections either. Each administrator connected can have as many viewer connections open as they need.

What happens if you go over your user limit? The system simply logs another user off to make room.

Signing up

So how can you give this thing a test drive? Simply signup here for a 15 day trial:

Click here to signup

What if you love all the features you see, but because of company policy you can’t use a hosted service?

Soon you will be able to get a self-hosted version that you can install on your own server.

Everything you see here will be in the next version of Enterprise Remote Control stand alone server. It will be a free update for all current customers.

If you want to get it at a better price (It will go up after the release), purchase the current version before the release (In about two months) and you will get the upgrade for free:

Enterprise Remote Control Purchase Link

Note that the self hosted edition places no limit on the number of computers you can register – it is only licensed by the number of concurrent administrators.

If you are a current Enterprise Remote Control customer, as promised this will be a free update. We should start the beta in about a month. We still need to work through a few more feature additions and a good migration system to move your current settings before we can start the beta.

If you have any questions or need support, please contact us at:

support@intelliadmin.com

I was browsing old episodes of the Computer Chronicles on YouTube. It was a TV show from the 80′s and 90′s that talks about all things computer related.

I liked to watch it back in the 80′s to see more about my favorite computer – the Commodore 64.

I found one that you might find fun to watch…an episode from 1995 that talks about this new thing called “The Internet”

Watch and enjoy:

I came across a utility this week that you might want to add to your toolbox.

It is called WinDirStat.

The program will give you a detailed view of what folders and files are taking up the most hard drive space.

When you run the application it will analyze your local hard drives for usage:

Once the operation is complete, you get a detailed look at your drives:

If you drill down, you can see how much individual file types are taking up in a folder or drive:

It has some nice configuration options that allow you to customize it to your needs:

I like this one since it does one thing well, and does not require any installation. You can just put the EXE on your flash drive and run it from there.

Download it from our website:

WinDirStat Download

Download it from WinDirStat:

http://windirstat.info/

Hello Everyone,

I hope your Friday is going well – I just wanted to put out this quick note to let you know we updated our SystemInfo.exe utility.

If you don’t know what it is, you can read more about it here

The update is in response to a few requests.

Here are the new features:

-Service pack information now included with the windows version

-Properly get the public ip when user is behind a proxy

-Added a new button to copy all of the info to the clipboard

Take a look:

The last one (copy to clipboard) can really save time.

Instead of having a user read everything off to you, just have them hit that button and paste it into an email:

Get your free copy from here:

http://www.intelliadmin.com/systeminfo.exe

Chris emailed me this week and asked:

“I was wondering how I could remotely execute a .reg file using Network Administrator?”

At first I thought there might be an easy way using the remote execute option, but in order to import the file you need a copy of it on the remote machine.

Instead, we put together a new plugin that will do it for you:

You select the .reg file you want to import

And Network Administrator will take care of it for you:

There is one thing to watch out for with this plugin. Regedit.exe does not report errors if your .reg file is invalid – so make sure you test it locally first.

Also, for Network Administrator to work make sure you have configured your admin share and firewall to allow it….here are instructions on how to do that for each version of Windows:

Windows XP:

http://www.intelliadmin.com/index.php/2008/12/enabling-file-and-printer-sharing-in-windows-xp/

Windows Vista, 2008:

http://www.intelliadmin.com/index.php/2008/12/enabling-file-and-printer-sharing-in-vista/

Windows 7, 2008 R2:

http://www.intelliadmin.com/index.php/2009/08/windows-7-the-admin-share/

Windows 8, 2012:

http://www.intelliadmin.com/index.php/2012/10/windows-8-enable-the-admin-share/

From a script on any version of windows (Must run as administrator):

Enable the admin share from a script

Get the latest version Network Administrator from here:

Network Administrator Download

If you purchased and want to update, just download again and install right over your current version. It will update the plugins automatically – just make sure it is not running.

I got an email from Clair this week:

“Hi Steve, We have been using the free edition of Network Administrator for quite some time. I was wondering if there was a way to get a report of all USB devices on a system?”

This is a good question Clair.

First let me show you how to get this info from a VB Script.

It took me a while to find the right WMI interface to pull this info, but I found it. It takes two steps.

The first part of the script will pull the list of device IDs:

Notice we had to play with the device ID string to pull out what we want.

Now that we have the device id, we can pull the manufacturer and the description of the device:

When you run it, it will give you a full list of USB devices on your system:

You can get the full script from here:

Devices.Dat

Remember to rename to .vbs once you download it.

Now, back to listing all the USB devices on your network. We have added this script to Network Administrator which makes it easy to get a list:

When you execute it against a computer, the list shows up in the status window:

You can get a copy of the latest version of Network Administrator from here:

Network Administrator

File and printer sharing is needed for a variety of Windows administration tools.

Our Remote Control, and Network Administrator need it to do their work.

If you want to use the remote execution tool PSExec from Microsoft, it needs to be enabled.

The same is true for other utilities like the cool software over at systemtools.com

The problem is..well..it is a pain to enable file and printer sharing.

With Windows XP, you have this nifty feature called “Simple File Sharing”. It needs to be disabled for remote admin tools to work, and it is enabled by default.

Unfortunately it is hidden under a folders option menu:

With Vista and higher there is an even better feature called “Remote UAC”.

Short version: It keeps you from using file and printer sharing for remote administration. Even more frustrating the option can only be changed by digging around in the registry.

Once you get those things taken care of, you still need to go into the firewall settings and enable file and printer sharing:

During the holidays a very generous reader sent me a script to take care of all of this in one shot. I cleaned it up a little and you can use it to easily enable file and printer sharing for remote administration tasks – without the hassles of going through wizards and dialogs.

You just run it from the command line like this:

cscript.exe enable_fps.vbs

In a few moments it will enable everything needed to get file and printer sharing working for you:

Get a copy of it from here:

Enable File and Printer Sharing Script

(Rename to enable_fps.vbs after downloading)

Note: On Vista and higher you will need to make sure your command prompt is elevated for it to work

Like me, you probably know that the file search in Windows is broken.

I have found an alternative that is small, and fast. It is called ‘Everything’

It allows you to easily search for anything and everything on your system. Once you download and run the program, you just start typing what you are looking for:

Instantly it starts returning results.

If you have folders you don’t want it to look at, you can easily exclude folders in the settings:

Here is a feature I really like, and I use it for my personal file server at home. You can turn on a web server so you can search and download files remotely:

Once enabled, you can find files fast right from your web browser:

Get your free copy from here:

Everything Download

More info about the program can be found at their website:

http://www.voidtools.com/

I came across a free tool called Fing.

If you have ever forgotten the IP address of that wireless router in the corner, or quickly need the IP of one of your printers – this is the tool to do it.

I had a Xerox printer that had been moved from our old office. The interface for it was annoying, so I ran Fing on my PC and found it almost right away:

It continually cycles through a network discovery. It does this every 60 seconds.

During each cycle you get a concise output of all the devices seen from your computer:

What is nice about that is you can see the MAC addresses of computers across your network.

You can use that for the next feature – wake on LAN.

If you have computers or devices that support it, you can power them on using the WOL feature of Fing.

Just like this:

Get your copy of Fing from here:

Fing Download